Two boys who were left stuck in the state care system for more than 13 years won the right to compensation yesterday.

A High Court judge ruled that the failures of social workers had caused ‘havoc’ in the lives of the brothers and had done them irreparable harm.

One was moved between 96 foster parents and the other lived with 77 foster families – a total of 173 between them. Both suffered abuse.

Each is likely to claim damages of up to £100,000 from Lancashire County Council, whose social workers left them to float repeatedly from one foster home to another after they failed to secure the adoptions by new families that the brothers were supposed to have.

Mr Justice Peter Jackson said in his ruling that the way the boys’ lives were supervised ‘amounted in reality to permanently looked-after disruption’.

The brothers, known in court as A and S, now 16 and 14, were taken into care in 1998 when A was two and S six months old. Their parents had separated, their mother abandoned them, and their father committed suicide a month later.

Social workers tried to place them with an aunt, a single mother of six children, but the plan failed. In March 2001, more than three years after they were taken into care, the boys were given legal orders that freed them for adoption.

But social workers did not find new adoptive families. Instead, the boys were allowed to drift through the care system with no one responsible for them.

The brothers can now take legal action to claim up to £100,000 each from Lancashire County Council

Mr Justice Jackson’s judgment at the High Court in Liverpool said: ‘The boys have had major placements, emergency placements, temporary placements, respite placements and respite for respite placements.’

The boys, the court found, were by 2008 ‘deeply distressed and disturbed and showed formidably challenging and sometimes violent behaviour’.

Their lawyer, Antonia Love of Farleys Solicitors, said: ‘This is one of the most shocking cases we have come across of children being failed by the care system.’

The judge called for a review to check whether others were similarly trapped in the care system.

Ministers want social workers to do more to get children adopted. Around 65,000 are in the care system, living in children’s homes or with foster parents, but only 3,000 were permanently adopted last year.

New rules will stop social workers using race rules to block mixed-race adoptions or to use other pretexts, for example that would-be adoptive parents smoke or are too old, to stop children winning new homes.